The Uber smells like leather and the driver's cheap cologne—something piney and sharp, the kind that comes in a plastic bottle from a gas station rack. Mom slides in first, all legs and that short dress, and I follow her across the seat. The door thuds shut. The highway unrolls ahead of us, dark and lit up in streaks, and the city drops behind us like something we set down.

"Evening, ladies," the driver says. He's got a wedding ring that catches the dash light when he adjusts the mirror. Mid-thirties, maybe. Soft jaw. The kind of guy who probably kisses his wife on the forehead before work.

"Evening," Mom says. She stretches her legs out across the footwell, slow, and the hem of her dress climbs her thighs like it's got somewhere to be. She doesn't fix it.

I watch the mirror. His eyes go there—quick, then gone, then back. Amateur.

"Long shift?" Mom asks. She leans forward, elbows on her knees, and her top gapes open at the neck. From where he sits he'd have to be blind not to see down it.

"Uh—yeah. Yeah, long one. Been driving since four."

"That's a shame." She says it like she means it. She always sounds like she means it.

I take the cue. I lean forward too, let my top hang loose, and the cool air from the vent hits my chest. I'm not wearing anything under it. I can feel my nipples tighten and I don't cover up. "Where you headed after this?" I ask.

"Home. Wife's probably asleep."

"Probably," Mom echoes. She runs her hand up my thigh—just her nails at first, light, then her palm flat, warm. I don't move away. I never move away when she does that. "You don't sound too broken up about it."

He laughs, but it comes out wrong, tight in his throat. "She works early. I work late. We don't—" He stops. Adjusts the mirror. "We don't see much of each other."

"That's a lot of lonely nights," Mom says. Her hand moves higher, past the hem of my dress, and I let my knees fall apart a little. Just a little. Just enough that the mirror would catch it if he looked right then.

He looks.

The car drifts a few inches toward the shoulder before he corrects it. Mom's nails dig in, just shy of pain, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.

"Eyes on the road, baby," Mom says. Sweet as sugar. "We don't want to crash before the good part."

"There's a—" He clears his throat. "There's a good part?"

"Depends." She leans back, crosses her legs the other way, and her dress rides up past where it should. She doesn't fix that either. "Do you like what you see?"

Silence. The tires hum. The dash light flickers green, then nothing.

"I—" He laughs again, that same tight sound. "You ladies are—that's not a fair question."

"It's a simple one." I prop my chin on my hand and watch him in the mirror. His knuckles are white on the wheel now. "Yes or no."

"Yes." It comes out fast, like it's been sitting in his mouth waiting. "Yeah. Obviously."

Mom smiles at me. That smile. The one that says watch this.

"Good boy," she says. "See, that wasn't so hard."

I shift in my seat and let my dress slide up my other thigh. The leather's warm under me. I can smell us now too—Mom's perfume, mine, the two of them mixing in the closed air of the car. His cologne doesn't stand a chance.

"You ever think about it?" I ask. "When you're driving. Some girl in the back, legs like this. You ever think about what you'd do if she asked?"

His jaw works. He doesn't answer.

"He's thinking about it now," Mom whispers. She's close to my ear, close enough that I feel her breath. Her hand is still on my thigh, thumb tracing slow circles. "I think he's hard."

I look. The mirror only gives me his face and shoulders, but I look anyway, and he knows I'm looking. His ears have gone red. The wheel wobbles again—small, this time, but we all feel it.

"Ma'am," he says. Just that. Like a man who's run out of other words.

"Ma'am," Mom repeats, delighted. "Hear that? He's polite." She slides her hand up to my hip, squeezes once, then pulls away and settles back against the seat like nothing happened. "You can keep driving, sweetheart. We're not in a hurry."

We're not. That's the thing. The ride's got another forty minutes on it, easy—the estate's out past the county line, and the highway's empty this time of night. Forty minutes of this. Forty minutes of him gripping the wheel with a wife waiting up and a hard-on he can't do anything about.

I stretch my arms over my head, slow, and let my top ride up past my belly. The seatbelt cuts across me, and I don't move it. "It's warm in here," I say.

"I can—I can turn the air up."

"Don't." Mom's voice goes flat, the way it does when she's done playing. "She said it's warm. She didn't ask you to fix it."

He shuts up.

I like this part. The part where they stop trying to be in charge. It happens faster with some than others—this one, he folded quick. Maybe it's the ring. Maybe it's the way Mom says sweetheart like she's doing him a favor. Whatever it is, I can see it in the mirror: his shoulders have gone slack, his chin dipped, and he's driving like the car's on rails because he doesn't trust his own hands.

"How long you been married?" I ask. Innocent. Just a girl making conversation.

"Six years."

"Six years." I whistle low. "And she still waiting up for you?"

"Sometimes."

"Sometimes." I let the word sit. "That's sad."

He doesn't say anything. The exit sign for the county line slides past, green and gone.

Mom reaches over and takes my hand. Laces our fingers together, rests them both on my bare thigh. It's a girlfriend move—the kind of thing you'd see two girls do in a booth at a bar, showing off for a man who's buying. Except there's no booth and no bar. There's just him, and the mirror, and the long dark road.

"You want to know something?" Mom says to the back of his head. "My daughter's pregnant."

His eyes flick to the mirror. To me. Down to where Mom's hand sits on my thigh, then back up to my face. "I—congratulations."

"Thank you." She squeezes my hand. "She's got a glow, doesn't she? I keep telling her."

"She does." He says it carefully, like he's walking on ice.

"I'm pregnant too," Mom adds. "Same father. Well." She tilts her head. "One of them, anyway."

The car swerves—hard this time, a lurch that throws me against Mom's shoulder before he corrects it. A horn blares somewhere behind us. He mutters something under his breath that might be Jesus.

Mom laughs. Real laughter, the kind that crinkles her eyes, and I feel it through her shoulder. I'm laughing too, I can't help it—the two of us shaking against each other in the back of this stranger's car while he white-knuckles us down the highway.

"Sorry," he says. "Sorry, I—that's a lot of information."

"It's just information." Mom wipes her eye with her free hand. "You can do whatever you want with it."

I sit up and fix my top—slowly, so he watches me do it. "You're not gonna tell anyone, are you?" I ask. "About the pregnant thing. It's kind of a secret."

"I don't—I don't know anyone to tell."

"Good boy." Mom pats my knee twice and lets go. "See? He's learning."

He drives. The highway empties out, mile markers ticking past, and the city lights are just a smear behind us now. His shoulders are still slack, but his hands keep shifting on the wheel—left, right, left—and every so often his eyes go to the mirror and stay a beat too long before they snap back to the road.

I spread my legs. Not much. Just enough that the hem of my dress pulls up and the mirror catches the inside of my thigh, pale in the passing headlights. I don't look at him when I do it. I look out the window, like I'm bored, like I forgot he was there.

The car slows. Just slightly. He catches himself and speeds back up.

"You okay?" Mom asks. Sweet again. "You're driving a little—" She waggles her hand.

"I'm fine."

"You don't sound fine."

"I'm fine."

"Because if you needed to pull over," Mom says, "we wouldn't mind. Long ride and all."

He's quiet for a second. Then: "You ladies are something else."

His voice cracks on something. Just a little. Just enough that Mom and I look at each other, and I see it in her face—the same thing I'm feeling. That bright, mean, happy thing. He can't touch us. He knows he can't touch us. And he's still going to think about this for the rest of his shift, maybe the rest of his marriage, this one drive he took at one in the morning with two women in the back who told him their secrets and showed him their skin and left him with nothing but a hard-on and a steering wheel.

Mom settles back against the seat and closes her eyes. "Wake me when we're close," she says.

"You're not gonna sleep."

"Probably not." She opens one eye at me. "But he doesn't know that."

I look at the mirror. He's watching us. He's been watching us the whole time—he just doesn't know I know. I hold his eyes for a second, and then I smile, small, and turn back to the window like it's nothing.

The highway keeps going. We've still got a long way.

Mom doesn't sleep. She never does when there's a man in the car. She just gets quiet the way she does when she wants to be underestimated—eyelashes down, breathing even, one hand loose in her lap like a woman who's done for the night. I've watched her do it a hundred times. The driver doesn't know that either. His eyes come back to the mirror every few seconds, and every time he finds her like that, something in his shoulders drops a notch, like he's been holding a breath he can finally let go of. Then his eyes slide to me, and it comes right back.

I keep my knees where they are. The hem of my dress is still up around my hip, and the seatbelt's cutting across my belly, and the vent's been blowing cold on my chest for ten minutes now. Nobody's touched the climate controls since Mom told him not to. He's obeying. That's the part I keep coming back to. He's obeying a woman who's pretending to be asleep, and he doesn't even know he's doing it.

"Where exactly are we going?" he asks. Low. Like he's afraid of waking her.

"Past the county line." I don't look at him. I look at the mile markers sliding past—white, gone, white, gone. "You'll know it when you see the gates."

"Gates."

"Big ones."

He's quiet for a mile. Then: "You live out there? Both of you?"

"We do now."

"That's—" He stops. Starts again. "That's a lot of house for two people."

I let the corner of my mouth go up. "It's not just us."

He doesn't ask. He wants to. I can see it in the mirror—his mouth opening, closing, the wheel shifting under his hands. The wedding ring catches the dash light every time he moves his grip, and I watch it the way I'd watch a fish in a tank. Six years. Somewhere back in the city there's a woman asleep in a bed he pays for, and he's out here at one in the morning driving two pregnant women in short dresses to a house behind gates, and he's not going to tell her a word about any of it. He already said so. I don't know anyone to tell. He told on himself with that one.

"Can I ask you something?" he says.

"You can ask."

"The—" He clears his throat. Adjusts the mirror. Doesn't look at me when he asks it. "The pregnancy thing. Was that real, or was that just—" He waves one hand off the wheel, a little helpless gesture. "You know."

"Real."

His jaw moves. "Both of you."

"Both of us." I turn my head and look at him properly for the first time—not the mirror, the back of his head, the soft place under his ear where he needs a haircut. "You want to know who the fathers are."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to." I settle back against the leather. It's warm now, warmed by my own body, and it smells like the inside of every car I've ever ridden in and never once liked. "Three men. Same three for both of us."

The wheel twitches. He catches it. Doesn't say anything for a long stretch—so long that Mom opens her eyes a slit, checks the mirror, and closes them again. She's awake. She's been awake. She's just letting me work.

"Three," he finally says. Flat. Like he's tasting it.

"Three."

"And your—" He stops again. He keeps stopping. Every sentence he starts, he runs it into a wall and backs up and tries a different road. "Your mom. She's—"

"She's my mom." I say it easy. I always say it easy. "And she's my sister wife. Both things. It's not complicated."

He laughs. It's not the tight laugh from before—it's worse, lower, the sound of a man whose brain has just quietly given up on making sense of the night. "No," he says. "No, I guess it's not."

Mom shifts. Just her leg, crossing the other way, and her dress rides up on the new thigh, and his eyes go there before he can stop them. I watch him watch her. The ring, the wheel, the mouth he keeps opening and closing. There's a bead of sweat at his temple now. The car's not warm. He's just working.

"You're doing good," I tell him. "Most guys get weird by now."

"Weird how?"

"Weird like they stop talking. Or they start talking too much. You're doing the middle thing." I reach up and pull the seatbelt off my chest, let it retract against the door, and stretch both arms over my head until my top pulls up past my ribs. The air hits my belly. The little bump's still soft, still barely anything, but I've learned to show it anyway—Mom says it's the best thing I've got now, that men look at a pregnant belly and lose their train of thought. She's right. His eyes drop. They stay. I bring my arms down slow and don't fix the top. "You're doing good."

"I'm not—" He rubs his face with one hand, quick, then puts it back on the wheel. "I'm not doing anything."

"That's what I mean."

Mom opens her eyes for real now. She doesn't sit up—she just turns her head against the seat and looks at me, then at the mirror, and there's that smile again, the small one, the one that's just for me. "He's got a tremor," she says. Quiet. Like she's telling me a secret across a dinner table. "Look at his hand."

I look. His right hand on the wheel—the fingers are fine, but the whole hand's got a little shake in it, the kind you get after you've been gripping something too long. He sees me looking and moves the hand to the bottom of the wheel, out of sight. Too late.

"It's okay," Mom says to him. Almost gentle. "It's a compliment."

He doesn't answer.

"Just so you know," she goes on, "we're not going to do anything. You know that, right? You could pull this car into a ditch and lock the doors and we'd still be out in ten seconds, because my daughter keeps a phone in her hand and my men answer on the first ring." She lets that sit. "So you can relax. Or you can keep doing what you're doing. Either way, we're getting where we're going."

The highway's dead empty now. No headlights behind us, no taillights ahead, just the long white dashes and the dark on either side and the little green glow of the dash on his face. He drives. His hand's still shaking on the bottom of the wheel, and he's shifted in his seat twice, and both times his thigh moved under the fabric in a way that told me exactly what Mom meant about him being hard. He knows I saw. He can't do a thing about it. He's got thirty more minutes of this and then he'll drop us at the gates and drive away alone with it, and that's the whole point, that's the game, that's what we came out here for.

Mom reaches over and finds my hand again. Laces her fingers through mine. Rests them both on my thigh, right where the dress ends, and this time she doesn't move them. We sit like that, the two of us, watching the road come at us through the windshield, and I feel her thumb start a slow circle on my skin—nothing, just a thumb, just a girl thing—and I feel him watching that too. The circle. The fingers. The two women in the back of his car who belong to somebody else.

"Ten more exits," he says. To himself, mostly.

"Count them," Mom says. "It'll help."